Family life in Montana? (Billings, Missoula: neighborhoods, schools, university)

[us2add3]

Any one know which area is better for families? Helena or Kalispell or for that matter another area of MT? Our family is tired of the rat race of the big city....any help would be greatly appreciated!! Pics would be great also!!

[Radek]

Originally Posted by us2add3

Any one know which area is better for families? Helena or Kalispell or for that matter another area of MT? Our family is tired of the rat race of the big city....any help would be greatly appreciated!! Pics would be great also!!

Check the pic thread at the top of the forum, and welcome to the search for Montana life!


I have friends whose family lives in Helena, visited once, its a beautiful place, but the drivers there suck ridiculously.

I'm a big fan of Bozeman, its a smaller town, and we're running into growing pains (see the other Bozeman threads), but we have a great university, pretty good school system, nice family neighborhoods and Belgrade is 7 miles west, and lots of good family stuff there.

I think just about every town in Montana has great family areas and not great family areas. But, theres really very few areas that are 'bad' in my experience.

Point of information: We only have 1 city, and thats Billings. Every other place is under 100k people. Though Missoula is getting close.

[rickers]

Yea but the drivers in the larger towns seem to drive like hard core city warrior pilots !
Great Falls, Missoula and Kalispell have their share of tailgating, speeding bone-heads !

[us2add3]

We are seriously looking to move to Helena...but were wondering about other areas. What part of Helena is more ideal? Know much about housing in the area?

[decembergirl]

Originally Posted by Radek

I have friends whose family lives in Helena, visited once, its a beautiful place, but the drivers there suck ridiculously.

This is so very, very true. In fact, it should be our new brand. Welcome to Helena, where drivers suck ridiculously. I love it.

[Radek]

Originally Posted by decembergirl

This is so very, very true. In fact, it should be our new brand. Welcome to Helena, where drivers suck ridiculously. I love it.

Go to Seattle for a day. Drive in downtown, Helena is a cakewalk compared.

However, I do have to say... you have SOOO many personalized license plates.


In response to the OP about Helena's neighborhoods, I don't know. Your best bet is to find information on schools and crime, as those statistics are generally good for determining a neighborhood's liveliness.

[rickers]

I think Kalispell has a new outdoors ice skating pond or rink. There are plenty of things to do in both towns. It seems as though it's the tiny towns where kids get bored and the kids in really small towns can be mean to new kids from out of the area.

[TammyBrena]

What do you all think about Ronan?

[bigtrees]

I wouldn't live in Ronan and I surely wouldn't raise kids in Ronan....it's on the reservation and I surely wouldn't have my kids go to school there.

[GEORGIAINMT]

Ronan has had a lot of bad things happen in the area.....young kids who drink themselves to death (literally), youth suicide, etc. I wouldn't want my kids to go to school or grow up there. Sure, there can be problems anywhere, but that area of the state seems to have a lot more problems than most.